To feed bar stocks to, for example, a forging press, a stock separating apparatus, which separates stocks that drop successively from a stock feed source through a chute and feeds them one by one into the forging press, has heretofore been used.
The above-described conventional stock separating apparatus has a tubular chute a, as shown in FIG. 1, and a separating member, which separates stocks b that drop successively through the chute a and feeds them one by one to, for example, a forging press, is provided at the lower end of the chute a. It should be noted that c denotes magnets.
In the conventional stock separating apparatus, however, when the size of stocks which are to be fed to a forging press or the like changes, if the chute a is not replaced with another which matches to the size of stocks to be fed, the positioning accuracy of stocks b to be fed is deteriorated due to, for example, a play between the chute a and the stocks b.
Accordingly, the conventional apparatus necessitates an operation of replacing the chute a every time the size of stocks b changes, and therefore requires a large number of man-hours for the replacing operation. In addition, since it is necessary to prepare a plurality of chutes which correspond to various sizes of stocks b, the conventional apparatus is uneconomical.